Who Owns HurricaneAlberto.com?

Hurricane domain names receive lots of traffic and attention if the storm turns out to be powerful, damaging or deadly. As a result, speculators buy up prime hurricane-related domain names almost as soon as the annual list of names is announced by the National Hurricane Center.

HurricaneAlberto.com was registered through Go Daddy's Domains by Proxy service, which keeps the owner's identity out of the WHOIS database. The domain resolves to the USA Hurricanes web site, which appears to have captured most of the .com domains for this season's storm names. HurricaneAlberto.org is owned by the non-profit disaster relief group Friendships Unlimited. The .net domain was registered by "Shadow Inc." and appears to be for sale.

As Florida prepares for the storm's arrival, it's not clear whether Alberto will make landfall as a hurricane or a tropical storm. It might make a difference to Radu Dino of Port Moody, Calif., who domains registered TropicalStormAlberto.com, which features contextual advertising links customized for hurricane-related themes.

The variant domains are where surfers should be wary. "We are monitoring DNS registrations and have seen several new names appear in the last few weeks with the trings 'alberto', 'beryl', 'donation', or 'hurricane' in them," notes Marcus Sachs, Director of the SANS Internet Storm Center. "Are they all legitimate? Well, let's see what happens as soon as the first storm forms and makes landfall."

That time is upon us. If you're in Alberto's path, stay safe. If you're surfing hurricane-related sites, be careful out there!

  Posted by RichM June 12, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter

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Who Owns HurricaneAlberto.com? - Jun 12, 2006





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